Tag: chevy

Let’s kick off 2019 with something a bit different, shall we? How about a bitchin’ 70s van made for drift car towing duties – with more style than a Tacoma or F-truck could ever dream of. It gets a minor refresh of the mechanicals but a massive style injection in the way of paint, period-correct body kit and oh-so-dished American Racing wheels to set-off that perfect 70s look.

I stumbled upon this thread while browsing Ziptied one night. It’s so great to see people still flying the build thread flag in 2019! Follow Jason Turner Drifting on Facebook and Instagram.

I’ve said this before, but it’s the humble yet amazing DIY garage builds that truly encompass the mantra of this website, and it’s a sentiment that Greg, the owner of this Swift, agrees with. His words: “1987 Pontiac Firefly (That’s a Canadian-Market Suzuki Swift or Chevy Sprint), with a full tube-frame, full cage, small-block Chevy, converted to front-engine-rear-wheel-drive. It all fits under the body work, and looks a sleeper.” The best part? The total cost came in at $3200CDN (roughly $2500US), an exercise in true DIY (see: transmission tunnel sheetmetal pillaged from dead freezer).

Thanks to Jordan for submitting this build, and for emailing me a nice little intro to the project. So nice, in fact, that I’m just going to post it here…
“Built for the Grassroots Motorsports $2016 Challenge and a great example of scope creep. Originally, the build was going to transplant a newer version of the van’s engine into its tired and rusty chassis. Instead, the van body was placed onto the late-model, wrecked car. I have to say, the low-slung look of the raked-body van looks amazing.”

After sifting through a mammoth 350+ page thread for last weeks featured build, it was a nice change of pace to receive an email from Matt Clark, a designer who has his automotive and non-autmotive work featured on his Tumblr page. Matt has built an assortment of cars from various eras and genres, each of which he’s applied his personal touch to, and I must say he certainly has a knack when it comes to cars. There’s something in here for everyone, ranging from a Datsun Roadster, some Camaros (one special one that you may have seen in a video), through to a couple of Hondas, and even a MitsubishiStarion!

You have to give it to Hal, he sure is sticking it to the man! Not only does he shove a V8 into the rear of his Porsche, he actually cuts up his own fenders and fits his own wide body kit without having to fly someone half way around the world to do it for him. But in all seriousness, this is a great looking car with an engine that many won’t approve of, but makes a lot of sense if you want some affordable and reliable power in your P-car. Purists look away now.

Have you heard of the Rampage Camaro? Of course you have, it was arguably the biggest hit of SEMA 2014; a second generation Camaro with a full slathering of motorsport technology and fabrication bestowed onto it by the wizards at Roadster Shop. And what’s better than seeing pictures of a glossy finished car shining under stadium lights? Pictures of that same car in bare metal with little to no panels bolted to it! I actually found this build through another featured build. I was browsing for updates on the red MKII Supra (whose owner works at Roadster Shop), when I saw him post a link to this build within his own thread. See, it always pays to look through the archives, you never know what you’ll find! I honestly had a lot of trouble figuring out which pictures to use for this post, as I found myself wanting to save pretty much every damn image from the thread, so I hope you enjoy the visual banquet that is this build as much as I did. It might not be achievable for most of us, but it’s nice to dream and peek into the upper echelon of car building once in a while. Who knows, you might find an idea or two for your own build?

Click here for more Roadster Shop builds (there are four so far including this one).

If you’ve been following my “What I’m Watching” series, you would have seen me post about Tom’s Turbo Garage on more than one occasion, including this very project I’m about to share with you again. What can I say? I love Tom’s work, his videos are enjoyable, informative, and funny, not to mention he’s great at wrenching on a plethora of projects in his amazing home garage. His latest project, Project Thunderbolt, sees him installing an LS3V8 into an NBMazdaMiata/Mx5. Even though I’ve posted about this before, I wanted to do a proper on-going entry about this car, where I’ll edit and post new videos as they’re released, much like Project Binky (which I’m gagging for an update on!) Tom is releasing new videos every two weeks, so you don’t have to wait very long to get your fill.

Every time I hear “Chevy Nova”, all I can think of is “I remember you used to drive that crappy blue Chevy Nova. What are you driving now?”…”Same crappy blue Chevy Nova”. Now, if you’re a bit younger than me, you might need to look that one up! The Nova in this feature is not blue, and DEFINITELY not crappy. What it is, is a high calibre pro-touring build that started out as a quick re-paint, but quickly snowballed into a full SEMA award winning build.

Thanks to Kelly for submitting. Click here for more Pro Touring builds.

P.S. Thank you to all those who replied to my question in the previous post, I was overwhelmed with the amount of response and pleased to know that the site-hosted builds are appreciated.

Firstly, I feel I need to apologise for the amount of LSx builds on the front page, as I generally like to aim for a bit of variety on the site. But hey, if people keep stuffing them into cars in interesting ways, I have to keep featuring them! This one is a bit more than just an engine swap, though, because the owner has transplanted a lot of the underpinnings of a Z06Corvette into his unsuspecting Triumph TR6. The most significant part of this build is that we learn the owner and builder is actually wheelchair bound, yet this proves no boundary to him as his enthusiasm and dedication to his car shines through, making the most of his situation and enjoying his passion to the fullest. So next time you’re feeling lazy or making excuses about your own project, have a read of this thread. My hat is tipped to you, Sir.

One company I’ve loved following online for the past few years is Roadster Shop. In fact, I’ve featured a couple of their builds before, which you can view by clicking here. While cruising around the Pro Touring forums, which I like to do regularly, I noticed they were undertaking yet another new build. This time, they’re teaming up with Craftsman Tools and putting together a really nice ChevyC-10pickup, all documented via some slick videos that detail each stage of the process. Apart from the videos there are also high quality images in the thread, which you’ll find at the bottom of the post.